Tag Archives: design

When my friend invited me to Bend, Oregon, over Presidents holiday I didn’t expect to find a Fire Pit Competition at their Winterfest. They seem to be made from steel salvaged from Bend’s old mill. People gathered around the art pieces at Old Mill Park along the Deschutes River to share the warmth of the outdoor sculptures with a purpose – they had to be interesting to look at and hold a blaze.

Cabin Fever is no problem for these sculptors. They have a problem to solve and a product to craft. Mission accomplished.

Not long ago on a cool November day I stopped in a small town for coffee on my way home from a trip to The City. Well, really, I missed the coffee house, an old house alongside the highway, upscaled into a relaxing place to sit with coffee or tea. When I turned around at an intersection down the road a ways I noticed this almost secret garden between buildings. Just enough space to invite anyone to sit and relax, slightly removed from the street scene. Mind you, this is a small town with a highway running through it. The noisiest thing you might encounter here is a logging truck passing through.

I asked 4 people in the hardware store and 2 in the coffee shop about who created it and is it a memorial for the lady painted on the sign. No one knew. And they all live here. It’s a real place but you can easily remember or create in your mind such images of relaxing spaces. Relaxing is all in your head. Right? I’m inspired to put some of these garden elements into my home landscape.

Relax is a state of mind.

Our minds think in images. Whatever images help you relax, that’s what you need to see in your mind’s eye until nothing else is there. Nothing. Think of it. No. Don’t think of it. If you can really think of NOTHING you are really relaxed. No THINGS are in your awareness.

Try this. Slowly push all the air you can out of your lungs, visualizing negative thoughts or images leaving your muscles and blood vessels as you exhale. Then slowly pull new oxygen into your lungs, visualizing light and new energy entering into every cell in your body. Make an image in your mind’s eye of a place where you feel relaxed, keep your focus on it and let it move you deeper within the relaxing space. Repeat. Repeat. Stay there as long as you feel comfortable and slowly come back when you are ready. You don’t have to be any place special or private to do this relaxation exercise. Just let yourself relax often during your day. If even for a moment and inside your own mind.

No argument that the sun did it’s darndest in recent years to dry out the land and burn up forests and grasslands in western America from Mexico into Canada. But what I’m talking about is mythology and tragedy and theater, drama based on real events. Mother Earth in a character in the play I am directing for children’s theater this fall. I need to design her costume and I’m rather stumped on this concept. I know a lot of my followers are artists or writers or gardeners or use fabric in your designs, all highly creative folk. Here’s your opportunity to help design a dramatic costume for Mother Earth, and then more for some other characters if you like!The play is “Phaeton and the Sun Chariot” by Wim Coleman. Phaeton is the son of a mortal mother and the immortal Sun God, Helios. The kid challenges his dad to let him drive the Sun Chariot across the sky to prove his own powers and of course disaster strikes when he loses control and drives the sun too close and too far from Earth. Fires, ice, floods, excessive darkness, regular panic and havoc among the mortals, that sort of disaster. Mother Earth comes on stage in a rage and scolds Zeus for letting this happen as she yells about agriculture, strip mining, and air and water pollution, in addition to burning up the earth. So we need a suitable costume. Actors will wear black tops and leggings/pants (no togas) and use masks as they portray different characters, much the way it was done in original Greek Theater. Mother Earth is an exception, she can have more than a mask, a full costume, as she enters from back stage. She has to look like she’s being destroyed, mostly by fire. The costume needs to be quick to put on and take off as the actor will also be playing other characters in the performance. I want it to give the mood of a supernatural or mythological deity, though she is not a goddess. She will probably be barefoot.

So there you have it. I’m asking for collaboration. I need ideas, drawings (very draft is fine), photos, any images you can send my way, please. What is your muse telling you? Use the comments section below or Contact Me here to send me your ideas. I’ll share them and give you credit. Of course I will post the completed costume after the performances in November. And if you can get to McCall, Idaho, come watch the play!

Hey there!

Thanks for stopping in! I hope I feature topics that inform or entertain you, or inspire you. Living in the Pacific Northwest, I write and make art about what is close to home and close to my heart, the people and places in Idaho's Rocky Mountains and Washington's North Olympic Peninsula. I traveled to Transylvania to learn more about creating dark fiction and you'll see some of my practice in this blog. I hope my writing and art surprises you and keeps you coming back. Happy trails! Kay

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“I want to make time stretchier. I would like much more rubbery days, and I just wish that you could lean on a week, and sort of push the walls out a bit, and suddenly about nineteen extra days would rush in to fill the vacuum.

There is not enough time, and I wind up just wanting to do things that I don’t have time for. There are so many things that I’d love to do, and I have to put off, or that it’s a matter of me choosing, when really I’d love to do both. And if only time were infinitley stretchy, I could.” Neil Gaiman